I agree with the other posts: you're in the golden age of efficient music sampling, with subscription streaming. I get 95 million cuts of HD music on Amazon, for example.
If no-one else has specifically said it, just
1. Grab some of the playlists provided by the streaming service and quick-sample the genre or sub-genre playlists. Note the artists for songs you like. You may not have to listen to each song from start to finish to get an idea of what you want to spend more time with.
2. Then, if you find an artist you like, go to the list of most-played songs for that artist, quick sample the top 10 or 20, and check off the ones you like to be assigned to your 'library' (collection of personal recordings). There's a place to do that for each song listing as you are listening to it if you want to add it to your library.
3. Finally, when you want to listen more carefully, open your music library to show all the albums, and sort the list of albums so that the most-recently-added items are at the top. Then listen more carefully to the most popular songs on the most popular albums for the artist, as identified by the streaming service. (That said, I also sample the less-popular songs, too, and sometimes like them more.)
4. As you go along, if you decide you're not interested in a library-checked song or album after all, remember to un-check it. The library that remains will be the music you like, and you can sort it all sorts of different ways when you go back to listen.
For completely different reasons than yours, I spent over 20 years away from listening to music, and had to catch up. The steps above are how I did it. I'm still doing it two years after starting the process. But the long journey is worth it and the method works.
